From its startling opening sentences, THE BRUTAL LANGUAGE OF LOVE has the reader hooked: raw, frank and often desperately funny, the stories in this collection set out to redraw the map of the human heart. We meet a young teenager who spends her afternoons taking baths with the school bully, a woman in her thirties who is convinced by a bra shopping trip that she is a lesbian, and an American college girl who marries an Egyptian man to prove to herself that she is not racist. Erian's heroines are often outsiders, but what unites them is their defiance - though their choices may lead them to suffer, there is an overwhelming sense that they may prefer this than to have missed the experiences that have made them who they are.